The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible PDF Author: Sean Patrick Fannon
Publisher: Obsidian Studio
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Fantasirollespil.

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible

The Fantasy Roleplaying Gamer's Bible PDF Author: Sean Patrick Fannon
Publisher: Obsidian Studio
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 266

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fantasirollespil.

The Fantasy Role-Playing Game

The Fantasy Role-Playing Game PDF Author: Daniel Mackay
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786450479
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Many of today's hottest selling games--both non-electronic and electronic--focus on such elements as shooting up as many bad guys as one can (Duke Nuk'em), beating the toughest level (Mortal Kombat), collecting all the cards (Pokemon), and scoring the most points (Tetris). Fantasy role-playing games (Dungeons & Dragons, Rolemaster, GURPS), while they may involve some of those aforementioned elements, rarely focus on them. Instead, playing a fantasy role-playing game is much like acting out a scene from a play, movie or book, only without a predefined script. Players take on such roles as wise wizards, noble knights, roguish sellswords, crafty hobbits, greedy dwarves, and anything else one can imagine and the referee allows. The players don't exactly compete; instead, they interact with each other and with the fantasy setting. The game is played orally with no game board, and although the referee usually has a storyline planned for a game, much of the action is impromptu. Performance is a major part of role-playing, and role-playing games as a performing art is the subject of this book, which attempts to introduce an appreciation for the performance aesthetics of such games. The author provides the framework for a critical model useful in understanding the art--especially in terms of aesthetics--of role-playing games. The book also serves as a contribution to the beginnings of a body of criticism, theory, and aesthetics analysis of a mostly unrecognized and newly developing art form. There are four parts: the cultural structure, the extent to which the game relates to outside cultural elements; the formal structure, or the rules of the game; the social structure, which encompasses the degree and quality of social interaction among players; and the aesthetic structure, concerned with the emergence of role-playing as an art form.

The Role-Playing Society

The Role-Playing Society PDF Author: Andrew Byers
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786498838
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Since the release of Dungeons & Dragons in 1974, role-playing games (RPGs) have spawned a vibrant industry and subculture whose characteristics and player experiences have been well explored. Yet little attention has been devoted to the ways RPGs have shaped society at large over the last four decades. Role-playing games influenced video game design, have been widely represented in film, television and other media, and have made their mark on education, social media, corporate training and the military. This collection of new essays illustrates the broad appeal and impact of RPGs. Topics range from a critical reexamination of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, to the growing significance of RPGs in education, to the potential for "serious" RPGs to provoke awareness and social change. The contributors discuss the myriad subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways in which the values, concepts and mechanics of RPGs have infiltrated popular culture.

Dragons in the Stacks

Dragons in the Stacks PDF Author: Steven A. Torres-Roman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
A one-stop, complete guide to tabletop role-playing games for novice librarians as well as seasoned players. Tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) are a perfect fit for library teen services. They not only hold great appeal for teen patrons, but also help build important skills ranging from math and literacy to leadership and dramatics. Role-playing games are cost-effective too. Dragons in the Stacks explains why RPGs are so effective at holding teenagers' attention, identifies their specific benefits, outlines how to select and maintain a RPG collection, and demonstrates how they can enhance teen services and be used in teen programs. Detailed reviews of role-playing games are included as well, with pointers on their strengths, weaknesses, and library applications. Coauthored by an experienced young adult librarian and an adult services librarian, this is the definitive guide to RPGs in the library, and the only one currently available.

Playing with Power

Playing with Power PDF Author: Michelle Nephew
Publisher: Michelle Nephew
ISBN:
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This study examines roleplaying games (RPGs) as both a literary and cultural phenomenon, in which the text’s producers take the role of an authorial multiplicity. --- ABSTRACT: Authorship has undergone drastic revision in the twentieth century. A fundamental transformation in literature, wherein the author has become a multiplicity of voices, is evinced by the development of roleplaying games as both literary and cultural texts. The literary roots of roleplaying games are self-evident, as they draw on writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and J. R. R. Tolkien. However, a consequence of the development of the roleplaying game has been a subsequent departure from these authorial beginnings; roleplaying games have irrevocably transformed the role of the writers who inspired them, altering the authorial position to become a border-blurring multiplicity. Not only do roleplaying game designers reinterpret literary texts as literary games, often borrowing rules material from other designers in the process, in modifying the function of the author from a single creative entity to an empowered storytelling among groups roleplaying games further complicate previous distinctions between author and audience. Players create a fictional world as a group endeavor, authoring a complex structure of fantasy that addresses Freudian concepts of dreams and wish fulfillment. In this way, roleplaying becomes a locus for issues of identity, including questions of performance, spectatorship, and gender construction. And by allowing play in regard to identity, roleplaying games are able to transgressively navigate expressions of difference, encouraging players to subtly work against the traditional split between spectacle and narrative. The thriving fan subculture surrounding roleplaying only emphasizes the transgressiveness of the hobby; this is a social formation that aggressively utilizes new technology such as the internet, through which fans are able to explore culturally subversive methods of authoring in the face of hostility from the surrounding cultural environment. They, too, are active producers and manipulators of meanings, rather than passively accepting dominant ideology. By fusing the broader perspectives of literary and cultural criticism with personal experiences, this study examines the development of roleplaying games from the fiction of individual writers to the interactive roleplaying based on them, wherein fiction writers, the hobby’s creators, designers, editors, publishers, fans, players, and the cultural environment are all invested with the creative power to contribute meaningfully to the narrative.

Role-Playing Game Studies

Role-Playing Game Studies PDF Author: Sebastian Deterding
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317268318
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 905

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Book Description
This handbook collects, for the first time, the state of research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in a single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 50 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Fallout and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like transmedia worldbuilding, immersion, transgressive play, or player–character relations. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help fans, students, and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this new interdisciplinary field.

Performing the Force

Performing the Force PDF Author: Kurt Lancaster
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786450459
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
With the technology of the new millennium continuing to advance, there has been an increased interest in participatory forms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror entertainment such as role-playing and computer games, websites, and virtual reality settings. People seem to have a desire to go beyond the ordinary and well into the fantastic. This work is a compilation of new essays (all but one never before published) written by experts in both electronic and non-electronic game genres, covering computer games, web pages, Internet role-playing, interactive movies, table-top games, live-action role-playing, ghost hunts, action figures and amusement park rides. They cover a variety of viewpoints as to how and why people become so engrossed with virtual reality–type activities.

The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies PDF Author: José P. Zagal
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040029760
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 588

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Book Description
This Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to the latest research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in one single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 40 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live-action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Baldur’s Gate, Genshin Impact, and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like worldbuilding, immersion, and player-character relations, as well as explore actual play and streaming, diversity, equity, inclusion, jubensha, therapeutic uses of RPGs, and storygames, journaling games, and other forms of text-based RPGs. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help students and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this interdisciplinary field. A comprehensive reference volume ideal for students and scholars of game studies and immersive experiences and those looking to learn more about the ever-growing, interdisciplinary field of RPG studies.

Warlocks and Warpdrive

Warlocks and Warpdrive PDF Author: Kurt Lancaster
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786406340
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
This book offers ten chapters examining contemporary fantasy entertainment forms that use virtual environments to amuse the participant. Called virtual fantasies by the author (as opposed to virtual realities), these entertainment forms are categorized into three main groupings. All include performance and imaginary environments as essential elements--participants are often simultaneously performers and audience. Many involve computer technology such as multimedia, digitized video, and online chatting. Part I covers imaginative fantasy entertainments, where the participants are required to use their imaginations to see the virtual environment. These include paper and pencil role-playing games (Dungeons and Dragons), live-action roleplaying games (International Fantasy Gaming Society rules), and collectible card games (Magic: The Gathering). Part II covers physical fantasy entertainments, where the participants need little imagination to see the virtual environment. These include computer games (Star Trek: Klingon), theme park rides (Disneyland's Star Tours), and immersive museums (National Museum of the American Indian). Part III covers social fantasy entertainments, where participants have built communities based upon the virtual environment (Star Trek fandom, Star Wars influencing Ronald Reagan's Pax Americana).

The Politics of Horror

The Politics of Horror PDF Author: Damien K. Picariello
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030420159
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The Politics of Horror features contributions from scholars in a variety of fields—political science, English, communication studies, and others—that explore the connections between horror and politics. How might resources drawn from the study of politics inform our readings of, and conversations about, horror? In what ways might horror provide a useful lens through which to consider enduring questions in politics and political thought? And what insights might be drawn from horror as we consider contemporary political issues? In turning to horror, the contributors to this volume offer fresh provocations to inform a broad range of discussions of politics.